ECB cuts growth, inflation forecasts

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FRANKFURT, March 7 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank
slashed its growth and inflation forecasts for 2019 and lowered
those for 2020 and 2021 on Thursday, acknowledging that Europe's
slowdown is longer and deeper than earlier thought.
With a global trade war weighing on confidence, industrial
production and exports have taken a dip, exacerbated by a string
of domestic difficulties, from German industry's struggle to
adapt to new car emissions regulations to protests in France.
Germany, the bloc's biggest economy, stagnated last quarter
and Italy is in outright recession, raising the risk that a
temporary slowdown becomes a more lasting downturn as business
confidence is sapped by a steady flow of negative news.
The following are the ECB staff's new projections for
inflation and GDP growth, with December forecasts in brackets.
The ECB updates projections once a quarter.
2019 2020 2021
GDP growth 1.1 (1.7) 1.6 (1.7) 1.5 (1.5)
Inflation 1.2 (1.6) 1.5 (1.7) 1.6 (1.8)
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Catherine Evans)